Truth Or Dare Special – Part Three

MadonnaTribe keeps on celebrating the 20th anniversary of Truth Or Dare this week indulging in memories!
Today we look back at the film through the eyes of dancer Carlton Wilborn, with an updated exclusive interview.

Dancer Carlton Wilborn reminiscencing about his Truth or Dare experience.

• MadonnaTribe: Hi Carlton, welcome back to MadonnaTribe! When is the last time you watched Truth or Dare? Do you enjoy watching it today?

Carlton Wilborn: It’s been a few years since I’ve seen the whole thing. And yes I do enjoy it, it’s great entertainment!

• MadonnaTribe: When you watch the movie do you feel like it all seems like done yesterday or do you feel the 20 years that have passed?

Carlton Wilborn: It actually blows my mind to realise that all of that was 20 years ago. Yeah, that’s pretty crazy!

• MadonnaTribe: If you had to pick up two best scenes from the movie, one overall and one in which you are featured, what they would be?

Carlton Wilborn: I’m definitely always moved by the montage scenes, when Madonna goes to her mothers grave site. The duet that she and I do together for “Oh Father”… I’m very proud of my work there and honoured to have had that opportunity.

• MadonnaTribe: Was it uncomfortable having the film crew filming all the time and how was it working with Alec Keshishian?

Carlton Wilborn: For me it was actually pretty fun, having the cameras around like that. I mean my life with Madonna got to be documented… that’s awesome! Working with Alex was cool. He was very focused, considerate and I believe knowing he was in the midst of creating something very special.

I found it sort of interesting and challenging of course. I was sure enough with myself at the time. All I knew was “fine, cameras are going to be on so what are we going to do in front of the cameras?”. That’s where I was.
It was just cool to know that I was going to have something that was going to be covering every moment of me and people were going to get to see it. I wasn’t at all intimidated about how it was going to represent me because it can’t represent me in any different way than I choose to represent myself.
So fine, bring the cameras around as long as I behaved the right way it was fine if the cameras were around.

• MadonnaTribe: Do you remember any funny or memorable episodes happened on the road that were then cut from the final movie?

Carlton Wilborn: There was a lot of interview footage. There were individual interviews for each of us. It was something very revealing that got cut down. The only surviving bit in the movie is some footage of Oliver talking about his dad but they spent a lot of time coming to my room, and we talked about very emotional things that were never shown that I wish they had.

• MadonnaTribe: Your Mom is also in the movie…

Carlton Wilborn: Yes, isn’t that great? Yes that’s a very special moment. I love my Mom. She is no longer among us. She was a performer and she was known around Chicago and she was sort of living vicariously through me.
She was having a lot of health issues at the time and it was great to have her be in a film, which was the biggest element that I knew she would have wanted her career to be about.

It was awesome, really great and she represented what my Mom was.

And it was cool for my Mom because when the movie came out she had girlfriends back in Chicago that were treating her as a celebrity. So it was great.

• MadonnaTribe: So you are happy with every scene that made the final cut…

Carlton Wilborn: Actually looking back on it, everything I could have desired or needed the film to have made it in. Hey, I helped my Mom to be a celebrity for a spell of time. It doesn’t get any better than that!

• MadonnaTribe: There is another touching moment at the end of the film when you say to Madonna: “You’re such a Lady.” How did you feel in that moment when everyone had to say good-bye because the tour was over?

Carlton Wilborn: I definitely remember feeling emotional about it but I knew that it was going to be a defining moment for the movie and I was watching everybody saying good-bye to her. The guys were all very emotional and I didn’t want to do what the others did.
And you know it was kind of a strategic thing based on what I felt about her.

You know Madonna was really a Lady to me. At least how she dealt with me, I don’t know how any of the other dancers felt about her. Inside of her rigid perfectionist, artistic brain there was a real elegance about her. The way that she lived her private life… that’s one of the things I was surprised by.
I would have thought that she would have had a much more avant garde private life and she really didn’t at all. She was very classy in her private life.

And I wanted to make sure that I’d say something that was really true about her I didn’t just want to say “Oh I’m going to miss you”.
I wanted to make sure that people got a sense of a richer part of who she was.

• MadonnaTribe: Describe Truth Or Dare in one word.

Carlton Wilborn: Real

• MadonnaTribe: Carlton, Truth or Dare?
Carlton Wilborn: These days…Truth!